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Jury to Consider if 'Overqualified'
Is a Code Word for Age Discrimination

By

Timothy D. Schellhardt Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated July 27, 1998 12:01 a.m. ET

Is "overqualified" actually a code word for "too old"?

Donald Hamm, a 54-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., accountant, thinks so, and he has persuaded a U.S. district judge to let his age-discrimination complaint proceed to a jury trial. The term "overqualified," the judge wrote, "may simply be a code word for too old."